First Impressions...

I had my first games of Warmachine today.

The forces of Cryx lined up against the Protectorate. Our lists were roughly.. 27pts (what we both pretty much had), Turns out mine was 29? Whoops Levi is worth more then I thought, though i was not impressed with it at all, Nice gun but. ;)

Protectorate
Warcaster Reznick (pimpdick)
Heavy jack Avatar of Menoth
5 Examplar Bastions
10 Knights Examplar
Heavy jack Crusader

Cryx
Warcaster Iron Lich Asphyxious
Heavy jack Deathjack
Heavyjack Leviathan
Heavyjack Sayer
6 Mechanithralls
Withershadow combine

A summary of the game, I deployed, he deployed.
Turn1, me.
I moved my force forward, Deathjack leading.
Ben
Moved his army forward. Killed 2 mechanithralls with Knights Exemplar.

Turn2, me.
Deathjack charges in and removes 3 knight examplar's, Withershadow kills 3 Knights, Leviathan trys to damage the avatar, and bounces(hit but no damage) on his armour.
Ben
Avatar shows the Deathjack how its done, Leaving DJ on 2 Hit boxes left... Only to be cleaned up by the Bastions. Knights have a shot at Asphyxious and fail. Crusader? no idea what it was doing... just chilling from memory, guarding a flank against mechanithalls..

Turn3, me.
Withershadow back off, kill 3 Knight's, Slayer moved towards bastions, Mechanithralls charge the crusader.. and break its fucking legs(damaged its movement, basically immobilising it) to our amusement. Asphyxious charges the Bastions, pours some damage across them, teleports back. Leviathan charges bastions and pour more damage onto the bastions (fuck me these guys are fucking nuts to kill)
Ben
Avatar crushes the leviathan, Bastions charge the slayer, only 2 get there, they damage movement and one arm and cortex. Last errant jumps on Asphyxious to try and lock him down.. Crusader massacres the mechanithralls.
Pimpdick by the way has been hiding this whole game behind the bastion wall, sitting back and buffing.

Turn4, me
I back the fuck off since I'm getting slaughtered in combat. And my ranged spells seem to be going quite well... Slayer with one army, lays into the bastions he can reach(2?) and first hit brings them down to the lowest hit boxes before he has to start removing models, Pretty sure he even got to kill the first one. Withershadow blast 2 more and kill 2 yay. Asphyxious kills the errant and Hellfires another bastion and teleports back outside Avatars threat.
Ben
Considers his options big time. Avatar moves forward, Pimpdick dances up behind him as a giant fucking shield. Last bastion destroys the slayer. Crusader considers a career change.

Turn5,me
Withershadow wastes the last bastion. Asphyxious decides enough fucking around. Time to destroy the Avatar of Annoyance... He charges in, fully loaded with focus and pops feat for 14 focus.... Turns out Avatar not so tough. I break it down to only a few boxes with only its main weapon working? But it was immobilised and as such completely useless against me now. Also note, has it not been immobilised Asphyxious would have been slaughtered..
Ben
Not able to run or hide now, Pimptank decides to take a chance and throw some spells at Asphyxious and camp his left over focus for arm buff, and hope he doesn't get one hitted.

Turn 6, me
Withershadow turn back and line up on the avatar for a charge, Not wanting to risk the free move/attack Pimpdick gets with spells they Pass.
Asphyxious, spells or charge? So i charge.. hehe Smashes Pimpdick in the face leaving him on 2 Hitboxes... Fuck.
Pimpdick special ability kicks in and he gets a free attack. Hits, High damage roll = Asphyxious on 1 hp.... omfg.. almost.. Lol
Then Asphyxious cleans up.

Game 1, Cryx. On nothing but 1 Hp.

So yeah, I made alot of mistakes and i also put deathjack in harms way intentionally to see how the game worked. Anway heres some thoughts on the game and units.

GAME

I like the mechanic's alot. The rules are clear and easily understood. I love the way everything depends on combination's of units and Ability's. I love how you can overextend and block off your own attacks.
Warjacks are properly tough, and deadly.
Balancing your focus across your army is really challenging. I found myself screwed alot because i didn't allocate focus when i should of.
It was fun.

UNITS

Withershadow.. omfg awesome. These guys are just awesome. Good magic spells. Good at combat. Hard to kill.

Mechanithralls are so cheap... but POW15 Hits hurt arm17 jacks. Alot.. hehehe But there very very fragile. But you get 6 for 3 points, and it took 3 of them to disable a heavy jack.

Leviathan... Meh... To work it proper.. you would need to load it up with focus... Not good for Asphyxious who likes to keep his focus.

Slayer... It was free thanks to Asphyxious, got stuck in terrain, probably better as a seether. Seether being basically the same jack for 3 pts more its just a million times better.

Deathjack... Lol, He's just ridiculous... But was also very dead.

Asphyxious... I kept him back too much... Never really utilised his spells.

Now onto GAME 2. Dubbed Pimpdicks Rematch.
We decided on a smaller game. Cannot remember why.

Protectorate
Warcaster Reznick (pimpdick)
Heavy jack Avatar of Menoth
5 Exemplar Bastions
Heavy jack Crusader
Choir
Vassal of menoth?

Cryx
Warcaster Iron Lich Asphyxious
Heavy jack Deathjack
Heavyjack Seether
6 Mechanithralls
Withershadow combine

So basically Ben removed his Errants, for the choir (basically a jack buffing unit... could of been annoying but ahahahahahhHAHAHAHhah read about this later..) and some other Vassal thing that also buffed jacks.
I took out the leviathan, and upgraded the slayer to a seether.

This game Ben deployed. I deployed. Ben 1st turn.
Turn1, Chunkster
Everything moved forward, Buffs went up. Bastions built a sausage fest wall in front of Pimpdick.
Me
Everything moved forward.

Turn2, Ben
Moved his shit around again and forward a bit, spread out his choir to keep both jacks buffed etc.
ME
Asphyxious moved forward, then... I decided i might try out this AOE of his on the block of bastions. Oh.. Target a bastions, Hits.. AOE will get onto 3 Bastions and Pimpdick. I pour on the damage across the bastions and reznick. I decide to pump out my feat.. this is where it got nasty.
Asphyxious's feat Restores my focus to full. AS well as a weak 14" AOE against all enemy living units. I killed 3 of the 4 choir members. :) Anyway.. by the end of the 3 AOE spells and Feat i teleported back out of harms way safely. HAHAHA All the bastions were on 1 HP except the unit leader was on 2 hp. Reznick had 6 HP left. Lol...
Then Mechanithralls charged the bastions and kill 2. Withershadow move up. Seether and DJ line up on the Avatar.

Turn3, ben
Bastions kill some mechanithralls, Crusader kills mechanitralls, 1 left. Pimpdick kills last mechanithrall.
Avatar moves across towards Pimpdick.
ME
Withershadow kill 2 bastions, Seether and DJ move forward to try and sacrifice one so the other will kill avatar. Asphyxious snipers the last choir dude out, and teleports backwards.

Turn4, Ben
Avatar charges DJ, breaks his legs. Crusader moved towards withershadow, Bastion towards withershadow, Pimpdick behind the crusaders shadow.
ME
Seether charges vassal, slaughters it. DJ punches avatar, does good damage but nothing broke. Some spell on the avatar lets him free move into Asphyxious, DJ free hit damages his shield arm? Asphyxious destroys the avatar (didn't learn from last game? lol) and teleports safely away. Withershadow charge bastion and crusader, so lets see what these guys can do in combat.. i read online there good at jack murdering. Turns out.. the internet was correct. Kill the bastion, Kill the crusader. Though the crusader got a free hit from reznicks thing... But didn't actually kill one.. lol only 4 damage needed 5. These guys are so win. 2 Of them wiped out a crusader heavy jack.

Turn5, Ben
Pimpdick slaughters the withershadow. What? He is the head of Public relations.
ME
Asphyxious Hellfires pimpdick and kills him. Pew Pew

Game 2, Cryx. Asphyxious the untouchable.

After game thoughts? Asphyxious is his own win condition. Everything in my list's is just a distraction to clear a path for him. Now i see why his AOE is brutal as fuck.
I definitely need arc nodes to deliver his spells.
I did alot better this game. That said.. were only using the units we have.. and i don't see the avatar working with reznick... he has alot of JACK buff's but they only work on his battle group of jacks witch the avatar cannot be part of(his rule).

But yeah i had a good time with the rules. Everything that came up was quickly cleared up. I totally recommend this game.
It is much more mature/easy/clear/win/fun compared to 40k.